The president’s Tuesday night State of the Union speech had little impact on support for his new spending proposals in areas like education, transportation and technological innovation.

Rasmussen Reports asked voters the same three questions about the president’s economic proposals on the two nights prior to the speech and then again on Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

On the first two nights, 39% supported the proposals. On the next two nights, support was 41%.

Fifty percent (50%) of Likely U.S. Voters now oppose the federal government spending more money in areas like education, transportation and technological innovation, up from 45% in the previous survey. Forty-one percent (41%) favor the idea, a two-point increase from before. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Forty-nine percent (49%) of voters now say cutting federal spending is better for the economy than increasing federal spending in these targeted areas. But 34% disagree and say increasing spending is better. Sixteen percent (16%) are not sure.

This marks little change from the survey released Tuesday when 47% opted for spending cuts and 33% liked increased spending better. Twenty-one percent (21%) were undecided.

As for the federal budget deficit, voters remain strongly skeptical that Obama will cut it in half by the end of his first term in office as he vowed in a speech to Congress early in his presidency. Just 22% say it’s at least somewhat likely that he will achieve that goal. That’s virtually identical to the numbers from before the speech.

The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on January 25-26, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

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